Downloading and Extracting WordPress via Command Line

Three commands. WordPress goes from zero to extracted on your server faster than any FTP upload.

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Step 1 — Create the Web Root Directory

If it doesn’t exist yet:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/yourdomain.com
sudo chown nginx:nginx /var/www/yourdomain.com

Navigate into it:

cd /var/www/yourdomain.com

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Step 2 — Download WordPress

sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Or with curl if you prefer:

sudo curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Both do the same thing. wget is slightly simpler syntax for this use case — no flags needed. Either works.

Always download from wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz — the official source, always the current stable version.

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Step 3 — Extract

sudo tar -xzf latest.tar.gz

The tar flags: -x extract, -z decompress gzip, -f specify the file. One command, done. You’ll see a brief scroll of filenames as it extracts — that’s latest.tar.gz unpacking into a wordpress/ subdirectory.

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Step 4 — Move Files Into Place

The extraction creates a wordpress/ subdirectory. Move its contents up into the web root:

sudo mv wordpress/* .
sudo rm -rf wordpress/
sudo rm latest.tar.gz

Verify the files are in the right place:

ls

You should see WordPress core files directly in /var/www/yourdomain.com/:

index.php  wp-admin/  wp-config-sample.php  wp-content/  wp-includes/  ...

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Step 5 — Set Correct Ownership

WordPress needs to write files for updates, plugin installations, and media uploads:

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/yourdomain.com/
sudo find /var/www/yourdomain.com/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/yourdomain.com/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

Three commands:

• chown — give Nginx ownership of all files
• find + chmod 644 — files readable by all, writable only by owner
• find + chmod 755 — directories traversable by Nginx

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Quick Verification

ls -la /var/www/yourdomain.com/ | head -10

The owner column should show nginx nginx for the files.

WordPress files are in place. The next step is wp-config.php — connecting WordPress to the MariaDB database you created in Part 4.